Generally, in hospitals, many systems or apparatuses should be used to perform radiation treatment. These systems and apparatuses include an electronic medical record (EMR) system, an order communication system (OCS), a picture archiving and communication system (PACS), an RTP system, and a radiation treatment apparatus (for example, a linear accelerator (LINAC)).
The OCS is a system that transfers a database (DB) in which a variety of types of medical information and patients' medical examination data are stored and prescriptions which are written when doctors examine patients to individual corresponding treatment departments over a communication network.
The EMR system is a system that is configured for the purposes of the storage and searching of electronic medical records.
The PACS is a system that can store images captured by at least one of medical imaging devices, including a Computed Tomography (CT) scanner, a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanner, a Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanner, a CT simulator, and a Computed Radiography (CR) system, in the form of computer files and transfer them, and is equipment that has been introduced into most middle-scale hospitals.
The RTP system is a system for establishing (drawing up) a radiation treatment plan for a patient using a program, and is configured to establish a radiation treatment plan, that is, it draws up radiation treatment plan information and calculates and reviews radiation doses. Using such an RTP system, a user may select an optimal image from among images of a cancer region of a patient acquired by a CT scanner or an MRI scanner, or may view a medical image of the patient, directly convert the image into a digital image, perform basic image processing on the digital image, set reference coordinates for the acquired image, perform contouring on each region, and calculate the direction and dose of a radiation beam based on the size of cancer tissue.
The fundamental principle of radiation treatment is intended to minimize not only acute and chronic radioactive reactions or complications, which may occur in normal tissue, but also the occurrence of a secondary tumor while increasing the effects of cancer treatment. For this purpose, there is a need to establish an appropriate radiation treatment plan.
The radiation treatment apparatus is an apparatus that actually performs radiation treatment on a patient according to an RTP that is drawn up by the RTP system.
The tumor treatment methods of radiation oncology have been newly developed and diversified, and accordingly treatment apparatuses and applications for the various treatment methods have been newly developed.
In the field of radiation oncology, the process of radiation treatment that is performed on a patient is as follows. First, in order to acquire information about the tumor of a patient, medical images of the patient are acquired via a medical imaging device. Thereafter, an RTP is made based on the medical images of the patient via an RTP system. Thereafter, radiation treatment is performed using a radiation treatment apparatus based on the RTP that has been made via the RTP system.
In this case, a LINAC, a Brachytherapy system, a Cyberknife, and a tomotherapy system have been developed and used as radiation treatment apparatuses, and these radiation treatment apparatuses are appropriately selected and used depending on the state of the tumor of a patient and the region of treatment.
An RTP system according to the technology of a conventional embodiment establishes radiation treatment plans (RTPs) using only medical images of patients. That is, since the conventional RTP system does not take into account the states and ages of patients, the same RTP may be established and then radiation treatment may be performed based on the same RTP, even in the case in which the ages of patients are different or the patients have singularities.
Accordingly, there arises a need for an apparatus for establishing RTPs using information about the characteristics of patients as well as medical images.
The above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention and therefore it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person of ordinary skill in the art.